Archive - Nov 15, 2015

It’s easy to be frightened by these proposals. But if governments think they can force us to accept negative interest rates on our savings by abolishing cash, they need to think again. It’s preposterous to assume that savers will passively accept outright confiscation of their assets via negative interest rates or a ban on cash. Instead, people will simply revert to other stores of value.

It's simple - in theory - a central planning body, who knows what is best for the rest of society, lowers interest rates (to reduce the cost of capital, encourage entrepreneurial actvities, and stimuluate the economy - and therefore jobs - for the average joes and josephines of the world). But a funny thing happens when the world is saturated in debt, leveraged to the max, and liquidified by lenders of last resort... the textbook breaks!

If it looks like a recession, walks like a recession and quacks like a recession, it’s a recession.

"The worldwide collection of phone calls, emails, text messages and our total loss of privacy is all about taxes – NOT terrorism. With all this power, and the demand that encryption be outlawed, none of this surveillance has stopped one terrorist act... Let’s knock off the bullshit and stop the Stasi tactic of building files on everyone. Focus on just the targets to protect society sand we just might stop something like this if we tried."

For the latest bit of evidence that global trade is indeed in free fall, look no further than the container terminals at the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Calif. and around New York harbor which handle more than 50% of seaborne freight coming into the US. As it turns out, “peak” season turned out to be anything but.

Greenspan’s phony disinflation success led to the Fed’s embrace of fully mobilized and massively intrusive monetary policy in the guise of the Great Moderation and the wealth effects theory of financial asset levitation. In due course, Greenspan’s self-aggrandizing but purely experimental forays of massive central bank intrusion in the financial markets were supplanted by the hard-core Keynesian model of Bernanke and Yellen. Alas, they operated under the grand illusion that a domestic wage and price spiral would tell them when the domestic GDP bathtub was filled to the full employment brim, and therefore when to lift their foot from the monetary accelerator. It never happened, and they never did. The era of Lite Touch monetary policy was by now ancient history.

"The days of uncontrolled immigration and illegal entry can't continue just like that. Paris changes everything."

Following the weakness in the few minutes of after-hours trading on Friday's US session that overlapped with the first headlines from France, we are getting a first glimpse at the posible fallout from the Paris terror attacks. The Middle Eastern stock markets tumbled significantly with Saudi Arabia's Tadawul All Share index down 3% (biggest drop in 3 months) to its lowest since December 2012, and Dubai's FMG Index plunged 3.7% to its lowest since 2014. Short-run implication for the equity market is likely to be negative according to Goldman, with a notably higher risk premium regarding uncertainties about the medium-term political implications.

"I really hope I am wrong about everything I wrote. I hope those advocating for positive statements and solidarity will win the day. I hope EU politicians change course before it’s too late. I hope all of those things, but hope is not going to save Europe... Because if not, the backlash against Muslims generally, and refugees specifically, is likely to be sustained and unjustifiably harsh."

"Do not intervene yourself.."

Forget multiple millennia of ingrained religious zealotry, generations of ingrained hatred of 'infidel' invasions and resource exploitation, Bernie Sanders revealed, in an apparently entirely serious statement on CBS's Face The Nation that climate change will lead to terrorism, adding that the attack on Paris is an early example of this phenomenon playing out.

The massacre that occurred in Paris on Friday night has made the US more resolute than ever about cracking down on terror. Need proof? Just ask John Kerry, who has developed a "draft plan" for Syria that will have everything all better in the short span of two years.

New car loans used to be 36 months (three years) and then 48 months (four years). Back when the economy was sane. Today, the typical new car loan is 72 months (six years). This is almost double the formerly typical length of a new car loan. But even that is not – apparently – enough to keep the music playing. Enter the eight-year loan... Are people really that stupid?

Meet the new moron same as the old moron...